::HELP:: Animate Rubik’s Cube ::HELP::

[Anonymous]

I am wondering if anyone out there knows how to set up a rubik's cube for animation. I know that for a fully functioning one, some mel scripting would be involved, but I do not know how to work the script yet. If someone reading this knows some script, or can offer some hints on how to animate a rubik's cube in Maya, please don't hesitate to respond.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I could tell you how to do it in max, but not maya (and, yes, you'd need to do some scripting). This is a max forum.

[Anonymous]

In max - you could create 3 point helpers (or dummy objects) and animate them in your 3 axis. Then use link constraint at the various key points to switch to the correct parent object .

[Anonymous]

it's new to max and i got school project on rubik's cube but i don't know how to animate it.

please help

[Anonymous]

it's new to max and i got school project on rubik's cube but i don't know how to animate it.

please help

What have you tried to far?

[Anonymous]

i tried TCB rotation but the result ain't right

[Anonymous]

nevermind that, i solve the problem. i path constraint my camera but how do i change the speed of the camera when it move along the circle

[Anonymous]

nu uh : most simple way to animate is to just set up group based pivots

[tkaap2]

Have all Rubik's -based questions been answered at this point? I have a fully rigged one working in Maya, and I'd be happy to help with Maya questions on the process.
-T

[Anonymous]

I also have a similar project of animating a rubic cube in Maya. Does anyone have a solution to make the cube
animate in Maya? How can I use set driven key?

[tkaap2]

I built a working Rubik's Cube rig that you're free to use, as well as a tutorial on how to build one yourself. ( http://kaap.us/rubikModelling.php )

It's complex to get it working, but it's very simple to use once you have it set up.

-Tony

[Anonymous]

hey this is my Rubik's Rig, check it out

RubixCube is a mel based rig, used for the animation of a Rubik’s cube.
The resulting cube is light, fully functional, with an easy-to-use graphical interface.
Any kind of animation, such as translating, rotating, or scaling the whole cube as an entity, is possible;
as well as the usual Rubik’s cube real life movements.

download link : http://www.geonak.com/downloads/RubixCube.zip

Regards
__________________
Georges
"Eye of an artist, Mind of an Engineer"
www.geonak.com

[tkaap2]

Georges,

I started taking a look at this rig, and I'll have to take a longer look to get used to how it is supposed to work. The interface looks pretty simple, but the rig seems pretty easy to mess up on. (Like I said, I'll have to either spend longer on it, or re-read the manual). It seems like you have to use the interface in order to get the keys to work. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, but then it's important that every function you'd want is on the interface.

I found myself wanting a "reset" button to fix the cube once I had broken it, and I couldn't find how to do that. (I ended up just starting the scene over, but there's probably a better way).

I liked the selection handles for each face, but it was a little confusing at first, since I was still anticipating using Maya's rotate manipulator to do the rotation. Once I got used to using your interface for rotations, the selection effects in Maya's viewport were less of a problem. You may way to just put 6 buttons on your interface to do the same thing as selecting one of the handles. Since the focus in on your interface already, selecting a square button on that window may be easier than selecting a curve in the viewport.

Since your selection method works by making user select the curves instead of the cubes, you may want to consider creating a referenced display layer for the cubes, to prevent the user from accidentally selecting them and breaking things.

You may also want to consider changing how your interface handles rotations. Since the four rotation values that the animator is likely to want are +-90 +-180, you may want to just put four buttons on the interface for rotations rather than a button and a text box. I think that would prove to be a faster way to input animations.


It's very different from my rig, but it gets the job done, and the workflow will be suit some users better than the workflow for mine would. I like a number of the features for yours (good visual cues for selection), and I may "borrow" those if I write another version of my rig.

-Tony

[n8skow]

front page of AREA currently has a tutorial on rigging a Rubik's cube...
area.autodesk.com/forum/index.php/tutorials/tutorial_index/rubiks_cube_rigging/

[tkaap2]

I noticed. I'm good friends with the author.... 😉
-T

[Anonymous]

I noticed. I’m good friends with the author....

hehe

hey
thanks for your comments Tony
i saw your Rubik's work, good job, didn't run through all of it since i don't have much time at the moment ( i'll do it in the future, i hope ),
but the first thing that jumped into my eyes was that in your method you are using an expression which is not the case in mine ( well in my V1 i used expressions ) but in V2 i don't which makes it much more light and remove the timeline scrubbing restriction.
Thanks for the remarks you gave about my work, that was constructive and helpful, there are some things that i already thought of and left them for the nonfree version , and others i didn't.
at the moment i don't have much time as i already said , so when i have some i'll play with it again and make some UI improvements.

Regards

Georges

[SteveHibberd]

Seems to be a lot simpler in Blender, you just set the rotation order of each piece to WXYZ and thats it.
Shame you cant do that in Maya...

[mcw0]

Don't need to set rotation order.  Very simple rig.